A life of experiences

On motivation and discipline

A couple of days ago I read a great blog post by Joel Runyon of the Blog of Impossible Things. Even though I am not a big fan of his writing style, I am pretty impressed by the way he keeps challenging himself to do that what seems impossible. It resonates with my own life purpose, I guess (see my previous post).. This particular post deals with the difference between motivation and discipline. Joel states that motivation isn’t enough to accomplish big things, you will need discipline for that. Big things do not come instantly and effortlessly, you will need to put in hours and hours of work to achieve the things that really matter.

As I already said in my post on my life purpose, I have been focusing on the relatively easy tasks on my bucket list for too long. I’ve realized that I do have enough motivation to start stuff and imagine myself achieving big things, but I lack the necessary discipline to keep on working towards the larger goals. And I’ve had enough of that.

Therefore, it’s time to work on the big stuff. Two examples I’ma already working on are the weight loss (sub 75kg might not seem much to you but it’s been a LONG time since I’ve seen that on my scale) and the sub 20 5k. But that’s not enough. These goals on my list aren’t there for show, they’re there to be worked on. And that’s what I’m going to do.

Thanks to Joel for making me realize that motivation isn’t enough, and only discipline will get you where you want to be. I’d like to rephrase this in my own words, something I came up with during one of my sub 20 5k schedule training runs:

“Motivation will get you to the start. Discipline will get you to the finish.”

ABOUT

Hi, I'm Bas! Welcome to my personal weblog, where I keep track of all the things I want to do before I kick the bucket, and the actions I take in order to achieve them. I hope this will inspire you to do something similar. Life's too short!